Hi Mat
Great to meet you and 'mob' in Stradbally.
Hope you enjoy PK poems.
I look forward to your views on Fr Mat and hopefully some discussion.
I came across a poem by said PK titled
'A pathetic Ballad of a big dinner'

"Its all about a dinner that I (PK) did endure
One Saturday evening all for Thomas Moore "
Whenever i get to scan it I will post it. After your visit to Avoca you will enjoy it .

My birthday comes as usual
As birthdays will:
You can't keep the eastern sun
On Cassidy's hill:
You can't stop the clock of Time
On Adam's mill:
You can't slip down your vest
Death's great pill:
You must grow old Patrick Kavanagh
So dream your fill.

At any rate,Felix Meegan
And crying Phil
Paddy Brennan and Jordan
Must run still
The same distance ahead of me .....
For good or ill,
You cannot Patrick Kavanagh,liquidate
Life's little bill.

We have tested and tasted too much, lover-
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.

And the newness that was in every stale thing
When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill
Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins
And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.

O after Christmas we'll have no need to go searching
For the difference that sets an old phrase burning-
We'll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning
Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.
And we'll hear it among decent men too
Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
Won't we be rich, my love and I, and please
God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour-
And Christ comes with a January flower.

"Now is the healing, quiet hour
that fills this gay green world
with peace and grateful rest..."

It is somewhere near the zone Patrick K. takes me to.
That is the beauty of poetry (and the danger!);
it can bring on a mood
and embrace/dump us there.

"Dennis was described at this time as having 'the nervous and imaginative temperament, infused with a sense of humour, that comes of his Irish-Australian breeding. He is tall enough to look a small man straight in the eyes. He is of slight but enduring physique, and the lines about his clean-shaven mouth prove that he has learned patience and does not despair of learning wisdom. An aquiline nose and slate grey eyes give his face the quaint suggestion of a philosophic diagram, while a half-hidden twinkle suggests that it may have a humorous footnote. Dark hair is brushed straight back'."http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A080305b.htm

Regards,
Mat.

"Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart." San Juan de la Cruz.

This thread reminded me of a poem by Galway Kinnell, one of my favorite poets. In the poem Kinnell mentions Kavanagh, who I've been meaning to look up, so I was happy to read some of his poems here.

OATMEAL by Galway Kinnell

I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health if
........somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him: due to its glutinous texture, gluey
........lumpishness, hint of slime, and unusual willingness to disintegrate,
........oatmeal should not be eaten alone.
He said it is perfectly OK, however, to eat it with an imaginary companion,
and that he himself had enjoyed memorable porridges with
........Edmund Spenser and John Milton.
He also told me about writing the "Ode to a Nightingale."
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his pocket,
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas,
........and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they made some
........sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if they got it right.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the configuration of a
........Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up and peer about, and then
........lay itself down slightly off the mark, causing the poem to move forward
........with God’s reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about
........the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some stanzas
........of his own, but only made matters worse.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words
........lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there is
........much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field got him started on it,
and two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their
........clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours,"
........came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him -- drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the
........glimmering furrows, muttering – and it occurs to me:
maybe there is no sublime, only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and
........simultaneously gummy and crumbly,
and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh to join me.

"Walker, there is no road, only wind-trails in the sea." Antonio Machado, translated by Robert Bly

Hi Indi
Only read this poem now for some reason . Its a fun poem
I like to eat my Oatmeal in the sunshine (whenever that happens here!!) but washing the pot is my least favourite job
Im sure Paddy Kavanagh would have delighted with such great supper company
and the subject of leftover potatoes or any kind of potatoe .

Spraying the Potatoes
by PatrickKavanagh

The barrels of blue potato-spray
Stood on a headland in July
Beside an orchard wall where roses
Were young girls hanging from the sky.

The flocks of green potato stalks
Were blossom spread for sudden flight,
The Kerr's Pinks in frivelled blue,
The Arran Banners wearing white.

And over that potato-field
A lazy veil of woven sun,
Dandelions growing on headlands, showing
Their unloved hearts to everyone.

And I was there with a knapsack sprayer
On the barrel's edge poised. A wasp was floating
Dead on a sunken briar leaf
Over a copper-poisoned ocean.

The axle-roll of a rut-locked cart
Broke the burnt stick of noon in two.
An old man came through a cornfield
Remembering his youth and some Ruth he knew.

He turned my way. 'God further the work'.
He echoed an ancient farming prayer.
I thanked him. He eyed the potato drills.
He said: 'You are bound to have good ones there'.

We talked and our talk was a theme of kings,
A theme for strings. He hunkered down
In the shade of the orchard wall. O roses
The old man dies in the young girl's frown.

And poet lost to potato-fields,
Remembering the lime and copper smell
Of the spraying barrels he is not lost
Or till blossomed stalks cannot weave a spell.

My black hills have never seen the sun rising,
Eternally they look north towards Armagh.
Lot's wife would not be salt if she had been
Incurious as my black hills that are happy
When dawn whitens Glassdrummond chapel.

My hills hoard the bright shillings of March
While the sun searches in every pocket.
They are my Alps and I have climbed the Matterhorn
With a sheaf of hay for three perishing calves
In the field under the Big Forth of Rocksavage.

The sleety winds fondle the rushy beards of Shancoduff
While the cattle-drovers sheltering in the Featherna Bush
Look up and say: "Who owns them hungry hills
That the water-hen and snipe must have forsaken?
A poet? Then by heavens he must be poor."
I hear and is my heart not badly shaken?

Hi musicmania .Yes its a very fine poem and one of my favorites too
Reading it I can see him following a plough on a cold November evening cursing that stony grey soil.
Might see you in St. Peter and Paul Chursh Monasterevin on Friday for Phil.
Is Ranlan Road not set to that old Irish air composed by the blind harpist Thomas Connellan in the 17th Century ?

lonndubh wrote:Hi musicmania .Yes its a very fine poem and one of my favorites too
Reading it I can see him following a plough on a cold November evening cursing that stony grey soil.
Might see you in St. Peter and Paul Chursh Monasterevin on Friday for Phil.
Is Ranlan Road not set to that old Irish air composed by the blind harpist Thomas Connellan in the 17th Century ?

Think I was getting mixed up with Scorn Not His Sympicity, getting Luke Kelly songs confused. After doing a Google search and not getting any answers either. Looking forward to Friday though since I was lazy in booking I'm at the very back! I'll need binoculars

O Leafy yellowness you create for me
A world that was and now is poised above time.
I do not need to puzzle out Eternity
As I walk the arboreal street on the edge of a town,
The breeze too,even the temprature
And pattern of movement is precisely the same
As broke my heart for youth passing.Now I am sure
Of something.Something will be mine whereever I am.
I want to throw myself on the public street without caring
For anything but the prayering that the earth offers.
It is October over all my life and the light is staring
As it caught me once in a plantation by the fox coveret.
A man is ploughing groung for winter wheat
And my ninteen years weigh heavily on my feet.

musicmania wrote:. Looking forward to Friday though since I was lazy in booking I'm at the very back! I'll need binoculars

If I see binoculars there I'll know its you musicmania

Raglan road was set to the music of The Dawning of the day which was indeed composed by that blind harpist Thomas Connellan .Fair dues to him

I know now why I was confused. Phil did record Raglan Road on a couple of his CD's and I must have assumed he wrote it. Did you enjoy Friday? I thought it was amazing. Here is a link to my photos from the back row